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March 28, 2024, 01:46:34 PM

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How's your employer been?

Started by holyzombiejesus, March 17, 2020, 08:38:56 PM

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Small Man Big Horse

I already work from home doing the online TEFL thing but am fucked if I get ill as neither of my employers offer sick pay.

Dewt

Thank fuck I work for a family company. On a call with my boss right now, who just said he isn't buying the "let's get back to work in two weeks" thing, and if we have to work from home until the end of the year, so be it.


Icehaven

Got told to stay at home since last night, but my boss emailed today with instructions on how to access work emails from home, which is fair enough. A guy who runs an information sharing mailing list for prison libraries has asked for everyone to update him with what they're doing, and he's had about 6 responses saying they're carrying on or running a limited service, which means the other several dozen haven't responded because they aren't there and haven't set up working from home yet. There's only so much to be done from home though tbh, about 10% of what we usually do.   

Captain Crunch

Just purely for information, not making any judgements points here but my employer has recently done the following:

*  Ability to carry over an additional 10 days annual leave to 2021 (in addition to the 5 we can already carry)
*  Ability to 'sell' 5 days of leave for 2020
*  Time off with full pay for NHS volunteers and Special Constables
*  Extended training deadlines

Also just heard from a friend who works a large University, the senior team there are taking a voluntary pay cut. 

Mr_Simnock


GMTV

Just been told 10% pay cut for three months. Could be a lot worse really, folk have already been furloughed and a redundancy consultation has been kicked off. I'll be be doing well if I can cling on until the end of the year.

holyzombiejesus

We're working from home but I've been asked to travel on a train in to Manchester to appear at a vulnerable family's door and ask if they are ok and for them to say yes and for me to say oh good and then cyle back to the station and get on the train back home.

Trying to work out how long this is likely to continue for? There are 2 weeks left before it's looked at again, aren't there? So maybe in a fortnight, if not then deffo in 5 weeks I'd have thought.

Icehaven

Got an email today saying we all have to take 2 days leave a month to avoid there being a big build up of leave to take when we go back to work. I'd been assuming we'd be back some time in June at the latest so that's only 6 days, which seems a bit petty and hardly worth forcing everyone to take, so now I'm wondering if we're going to be off a lot longer.

Jockice

Non-existent. But thanks for asking.

weekender

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on April 23, 2020, 03:33:56 PM
We're working from home but I've been asked to travel on a train in to Manchester to appear at a vulnerable family's door and ask if they are ok and for them to say yes and for me to say oh good and then cyle back to the station and get on the train back home.

Can't you just get them on a video conference call?

Icehaven

Quote from: icehaven on April 23, 2020, 03:44:43 PM
Got an email today saying we all have to take 2 days leave a month to avoid there being a big build up of leave to take when we go back to work. I'd been assuming we'd be back some time in June at the latest so that's only 6 days, which seems a bit petty and hardly worth forcing everyone to take, so now I'm wondering if we're going to be off a lot longer.

And now I've been asked to produce a risk assessment for when we go back, despite no one knowing when this will be, so obviously not knowing what the lockdown situation at my workplace or in the country in general will be at the time, making it more like having to produce several different risk assessments for several different possible situations. It'd make more sense to just do it when we know when we're going back and what we're going back into, but somebody over my boss obviously needs something to do so is handing down more pointless work. It's almost as if no one knows what's going on!

Captain Crunch

Typical.

Personally I'd just take the old risk assessment and paste the phrase "adjust working arrangements in line with advice from PHE" into the further action column.

Captain Crunch

Sorry that flippancy ^ was directed at your employer not you.  Shout if you need a hand with it. 

Captain Poodle Basher

My lot have been fairly ruthless and used the current situation to ditch about 25% of my colleagues.

Nothing has been said officially but it's not hard to see from emails and system activity who is currently WFH like myself and who is still in "Stood Down" status. The latter seems to be mainly made up of the part-timers, the slackers, the incompetents and the poor feckers who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm under no illusions about my own continued employment should they decided to 'lose' another bunch of people in the coming months when our currently very busy period winds down.

wooders1978

Mines been pretty good - no furlough for anyone until 31st may at least - were all being kept very busy prepping for the industry we serve in the post covid19 world

We have out our eggs in the zoom basket fir our virtual meetings though and most of our larger customers won't use it due to security concerns

SteveDave

I've been told that if I get furloughed (and, as there's very little for me to do at the moment) I'll get my full whack of wages as they'll make up the extra 20%. Which is nice.

We've been asked to take 5 days holiday before the start of June and, with the bank holidays in May I've managed to make it so I'm on 4 day weeks until the end of next month. Which is also nice.

rack and peanut

It's become quite apparent that the only reason we are still operating is because our nearest competitor isn't. Not because we perform a necessary service or anything, just to steal their business.

Emma Raducanu

I got my furlough pay today. Bit depressing but could be worse I suppose

Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse

Can't complain, apart from not being able to do any of my usual outdoor work.

Dex Sawash


Boss applied for and got PPP loan from Big Government which pays us 100% of our average weekly salary of 2019 for the next 8 weeks. The loan is 100% forgivable as long as he does all paperwork correctly. It does make his labor cost 0 for the 2 hourly freeloaders. For the 4 of us high-flying piecework/commission people It only makes up the difference between our current billables and that average so he gets no real labor cost relief for us. I think his accountant is probably a moron though, can't imagine the rule were written to penalize our rare situation. If we were on the same salary as our commission pay, he would be golden.

wooders1978

Having praised them earlier in the thread and worked my fucking arse off to keep revenue churning whilst others have been basking in furlough, my employer has just announced a fuckload of us are going to be made redundant in June to keep the share holders happy - happy times ahead

Billy

All I can say is that thank fuck I don't work for Cineworld/Picturehouse anymore, which I left this time last year. The day after closing all their cinemas in mid-March, they made all Team Members redundant who'd been at the company for three years or less. As my old site was converted from a Cineworld to Picturehouse late last year, that meant all staff had "only" been working there about four months (despite some actually being there 10 years or more) so the whole lot got ditched, all being asked to reapply whenever it reopens again.

A week later once the furlough scheme had been announced, they emailed everyone saying "Lol sorry you're not fired, disregard the last email" and furloughed everyone instead - but at only 80% (no top up) and when the pay finally arrived a couple weeks ago, they somehow only got about £100 for last month, clearly nowhere near their average monthly earnings (it's a zero hour position)  - some are still waiting for the rest of it now. Some staff are wondering if they're either hoping employees won't notice or just happy to paid something, no matter how small.

My current employer pays us the full 100% (confirmed even before the furlough scheme) and is hoping to reopen around late summer., which gives a lot more peace of mind and I can hang around doing nothing until then at least.

Cloud

They're okay at the moment letting me work from home but getting a little antsy in general now. There might not be a company left to work for if this goes on much longer as they're getting no orders and losing money hand over fist

Gurke and Hare

Mine are good - everyone's working from home except one IT person and one facilities person in office which normally hold from in the tens to a couple of hundred, so easy for them to keep isolated from each other. There's nothing anyone can't do from home and management have bought in to that - we had an email today saying that for the moment we'll be continuing to work from home and will until it's safe to go back. So while I'd never give any employer 100% on general principle, they're a solid 95% at the moment.

Icehaven

Given before the government announcements last week it was reported they were going to include reopening libraries, and that my boss called a video meeting yesterday (the first we've had since the lockdown started) I thought we were going to be told we were going back soon, but if anything it was the opposite. She was talking about longer term plans for working from home and arranging future video meetings, and the (confusing) national guidelines didn't mention libraries anyway so presumably it's being left up to councils to decide wether or not theirs reopen and Brum's decided not. The prison is still on their own lockdown and will be for the foreseeable too so there wouldn't be too much point in me and my colleague going back yet, not full time anyway. I don't even know if we'd be allowed in.

Dog Botherer

Three days in and the restaurant where Mrs Botherer works is already straight up breaking their stated rules and seating massive parties because "their profits are down" and they've been taking "too many precautions".

GRAVE

flotemysost

Pretty good. My company introduced a flexible working policy a couple of years ago (to enable us to work from home as needed) so most of us already had company laptops, and as far as I know everyone apart from warehouse staff are now working remotely. They've also been really good with posting out any extra hardware (mice, keyboards etc.) too, so we don't all come staggering back into the office with carpal tunnel and RSI (although I can't make any promises on that front).

Ultimately I'm really really ridiculously fortunate to be working in a) an industry which is, if anything, doing pretty well out of this (people are still reading books) and b) in a role where it doesn't, in theory, make too much difference whether I'm physically in the office or not.

I'm hoping that the fact the company can demonstrably function with everyone working remotely might help remove some of the barriers to diversity that pervade this industry (and many others) - certainly in my company, the proportion of women in senior management roles, and ethnic and socio-economic diversity at all levels, is pretty rubbish.

But if it turns out you can work from home most of the time (meaning that being from a rich enough background to afford to live in/within commuting distance of London on a piss poor starting salary, is no longer an unspoken requisite) then hopefully this could open up opportunities to people who were otherwise shut out. Obviously there's far more to it than that, especially in regard to working from home and childcare, but it could be a start.

Icehaven

Quote from: Dog Botherer on May 13, 2020, 07:56:16 PM
Three days in and the restaurant where Mrs Botherer works is already straight up breaking their stated rules and seating massive parties because "their profits are down" and they've been taking "too many precautions".

GRAVE

Is this in the UK? I didn't think any restaurants had reopened yet.

Icehaven

I'm employed by a local council (Birmingham) and they're currently asking council staff to volunteer to do drop and collect testing in spike areas. I say 'asking' and 'volunteer', but my boss emailed me and my colleague, who are currently working from home 3 days a week and going into work 2 days, basically telling us to volunteer on the days we're currently working from home.

No fucking way. The centre we have to get to is a long way away so I'd have to get two buses right across the city (whereas I'm currently walking to work and everywhere else. Basically if I can't walk somewhere right now I'm not going there), then get bussed out to areas which have high cases of the virus and walk around hundreds of houses, interacting with hundreds of people handing out and collecting mouth swabs. I will not be doing this, under any circumstances, and I resent the tone of the request which is attempting to make it sound like we have to do this when I know perfectly well that we don't.
A few weeks ago I'd already asked my boss if my colleague and I were really justified in only going in to work 2 days a week when a lot of staff at other branches are doing 4 days now, but she specifically said to just keep doing 2. Also we're risking taking the virus into our workplace when great lengths and difficulties have been endured for the last six months trying to limit any spread there, so I don't think they'd be too thrilled to know we were galavanting around spike areas gathering people's mouth swabs on our off days.

I've expressed these concerns to my boss and she gave a vague "I'll pass your thoughts on at the meeting" answer but I'm hoping now they've realised we're not up for it and are perfectly aware we're under no obligation it'll just go away.
I'm happy to be redeployed if necessary but not to something so risky, particularly as it'd mean 4 bus rides each time too, fuck that. It's disappointing to see my manager(s) seemingly cowtowing to obvious instructions to make us think we had no choice, it's pretty disrespectful and obvious bullshit. I'm sure even the Drop and Collect organisers themselves aren't expecting and don't want "volunteers" who've been effectively forced to do it and don't want to be there. If my boss comes back with further pressure to comply I'll offer to go and sit in her office 3 days a week and she can go on fucking Covid safari.

#59
Local Councils are also being asked to visit positive cases' houses, and make sure people are isolating and have everything they need (food, medicines etc.). I presume it will be a knock on the door and that PPE will be provided. Someone I know has already been given this directive by their employer in the South of England, again not as an optional extra part of their role, but they were told you must do this.